About Me

I truly believe I am the luckiest girl in the world. At 23 years old, I've had more life-changing experiences than most do in an entire lifetime. From sailing around the world to dancing down Main Street USA, I have to wonder how this is all real.

What's Next?

For the first time in a while, I'm not really sure where my life is headed. I'll be heading to Florida after graduation to continue working for Disney, but in terms of major plans, all I know is that I want to make a difference. I'm not sure where, and I'm not sure how, but unknowing adventure is an idea I've definitely become more comfortable with over the years.

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Sunday, March 4, 2012

Per usual, I woke up at 5 to go outside and watch us pull into Cape Town. I had heard about how beautiful Cape Town is, but the descriptions really can't do it justice. It was already hard to think that this place is in the same category of countries as Ghana. Cape Town looked like home...just with a huge mountain that looks like a table in the skyline. The buildings are tall, the roads are cleaned and the temperature isn't too extreme.

This first day I had an FDP for one of my classes at 1:00 so I didn't have much time to plan anything, but thankfully my roommate Robin had an FDP at the same time so we decided to walk around Cape Town for a few hours first. So after breakfast, Robin, Kathryn and I walked into Cape Town and first found a bank. 1 US dollar is equivalent to 7RAN, but because of inflation the prices are pretty similar. What I mean by that is that a magnet costs about 40R and a tee might cost 250R. When translated into American dollars that's $6 for a magnet and about 35 for a shirt. So when we went to the bank we ended having to take a good amount out since the price were so high, but the machine we went to paid in all 10s! It was ridiculous to have to fit 180 bills somewhere without it being completely obvious. And I'm still probably going to find some in random places over the next few months.

Anyway, after the bank we did a little bit of shopping and went to a grocery store to get nutella before heading back to the ship. My FDP was for History of Modern China and although I had little clue as to why a class on China has required trips in Singapore and South Africa I can safety say that after the FDP I have even less of an idea. We walked around Cape Town and heard 5 hours worth of stories about the British. In a far-far stretch, I guess the British were a main imperialist force against China, but turning this FDP into something relevant is quite a challenge. And, the FDP ran an hour and a half late because when we stopped for a refreshment at a little place 5 people decided to order food and held us all up, grrrrr.

So we got back to the ship around 6:30 instead of the intended 5, and after dinner Dain, Becca, Michael, Jacob, Kevin and I went to the V+A Waterfront. The V+A waterfront is the major port that is about 10 minutes walking distance from where we were docked. The area is astoundingly beautiful. Though a lot of SAS kids were going to a district called Long Street to go out and party, we decided we REALLY wanted to see Star Wars Episode 1 in 3D and that was clearly more important than being drunk. Unfortunately, star wars was only playing during the day and nothing else seemed appealing. So we hung around the area and still had a blast. There were live musicians and other performance acts, we went on the ferris wheel, walked around the mall and got gelato.

Dain and I came back to the ship around 11 because I was going cage diving the next morning!

So far, South Africa seemed beautiful and I could not believe it was really part of Africa. However, I knew that outside of Cape Town all the dilemmas of Apartheid could not have been changed yet, and I was curious to see what was outside all of this wealth.